82km (384m vertical)
Pretty straightforward day today. We're out of the mountains, so the road was flat. It was mostly smooth too, which felt wonderful after yesterday's rough roads. Left the hotel at 7:30am and rode 70km to our lunch stop at the side of a dirty road. We had a police escort into Bucharest, but it didn't arrive until 12:30pm, which meant that we were waiting around in the hot sun for a couple of hours. Standing in the sun, waiting for the convoy to start, my computer read 106F!
I wore a bright green vest and stopped traffic for the group while the 39 other riders went past. The police escort stopped all the major intersections, so Jako, Jorg and I were mostly stopping small streets and parked cars that wanted to pull out. Still, it gave me an excuse to sprint up and down the road, which was much more fun than riding 20km/h the entire time.
Bucharest is a very big city, which actually makes it harder to get things done. 10 of us took taxis out looking for laundromats. The hotel had marked them on our maps, but there were none to be found. The closest we came was a dry cleaner, but they charged by the piece and it was expensive, so everyone ended up doing laundry in their hotel rooms and drying it on clotheslines hung from the ceilings.
Had dinner in a small cafe and then spent most of the evening on the internet, trying to figure out the Chinese visa situation. Still no good options. The embassy website is completely out of date, so its hard to know what the current situation is. I'm still contemplating a flight back to Toronto to get a visa there, although even that has no guarantees. Such a frustrating situation!
Photos from today:
Cows crossing road...and stopping for a swim.
Some Canadian content in the middle of Romania! (I wonder where they got the sign...and why they decided to hang it up???)
The horse and cart was very popular with the locals. There would be whole families riding around in these.
Duncan, Jako and I in our safety vests.
Convoy into Bucharest.
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